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Site Migration Complete

Kevin Frank

If you recently experienced broken links within this site, they have now been corrected. If you’ve had problems coming into this site via an external link, here are updated links to recent articles, and I apologize for any inconvenience.

FM13: Summary List + Virtual List
http://filemakerhacks.com/2014/02/02/fm-13-summary-list-virtual-list

Summary List Fields in FM 13, part 2
http://filemakerhacks.com/2014/01/22/summary-list-fields-in-fm-13-part-2

Summary List Fields in FM 13, part 1
http://filemakerhacks.com/2014/01/19/summary-list-fields-in-fm-13-part-1

FileMaker 13 Popovers
http://filemakerhacks.com/2013/12/14/filemaker-13-popovers

Generating Sample Data
http://filemakerhacks.com/2013/12/01/generating-sample-data

It’s Sorta A Value List Thing
http://filemakerhacks.com/2013/11/22/its-sorta-a-value-list-thing

Tab Panels: Seen, Unseen and Simulated
http://filemakerhacks.com/2013/11/18/tab-panels-seen-unseen-and-simulated

Conditional Tab Panel Access
http://filemakerhacks.com/2013/10/23/conditional-tab-panel-access

 

Level: Intermediate, Summary List, Version: FM 13 or later, Virtual List

FM 13: Summary List + Virtual List

Kevin Frank

Recently a question came up on the FMP Experts list re: the possibility of displaying a found set of customers in 3 columns in browse mode in FileMaker 13. While FileMaker doesn’t naturally display data this way, there are various ways to trick it into doing so, and today we’re going to look at a method that combines the new-in-13 Summary List field type with the Virtual List technique.

Demo file: FM 13 Summary List + Virtual List

2-1-2014 10-03-20 PM

Continue reading “FM 13: Summary List + Virtual List” →

Level: Intermediate, Summary List, Version: FM 13 or later

Summary List Fields in FM 13, part 2

Kevin Frank

Welcome back for our second look at the new summary list field type in FileMaker 13. Today we have three demo files…

…which in addition to summary lists, utilize a couple other new-in-13 features: popovers and conditional invisibility. As in part 1, the core technique uses a summary list to facilitate relational found-set awareness (in demos 1 & 2). We’ll also apply a modified version of the technique to SQL queries (in demo 3).

Demo 1: FM 13 Summary List – MLK, v2  (reminder: we saw v1 in part 1)

1-19-2014 9-41-31 PM

Continue reading “Summary List Fields in FM 13, part 2” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

Generating Sample Data

Kevin Frank

Have you ever wanted to generate sample data for one of your solutions that was random in certain ways, but within a defined range or scope? For example, assuming an invoicing solution with existing tables of customers and products…

  • choose 20 customers at random
  • create between 4 and 8 invoices for each of them
  • dated anywhere between 1 September and 31 December 2013
  • choose products at random
  • from the subset of products where price is between $30 and $50
  • create between 5 and 25 line items per invoice
  • with a quantity for each line item between 1 and 24

Wouldn’t it be nice to wave a magic wand to solve challenges like this? Well, I have some good news: Jesse Antunes and Geoff Coffey made that magic wand available, in the form of a custom function, back in 2007 on the SixFriedRice blog (Creating Random Numbers in FileMaker)… but I confess that I didn’t really grasp how useful it could be till Beverly Voth mentioned it in her article on Aggregates in Filtered Portals.

12-31-2013 2-24-17 PM

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

It’s Sorta a Value List Thing

Kevin Frank

Editor’s note: Today it’s my privilege to present an informative guest article written by Jonathan Fletcher on the elusive topic of sorted dynamic value lists. Jonathan is a well-regarded, thoughtful and thought-provoking fixture in the FileMaker community, known for his generous and frequent contributions to various online FileMaker forums.

Have you ever had a need for a value list that displayed a generated list of years in descending order? Have you ever had a client ask for a popup of dynamic characteristics or statuses in the order they are most often employed by the users?

1386121790383

Continue reading “It’s Sorta a Value List Thing” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

Tab Panels: Seen, Unseen and Simulated

Kevin Frank

Last time we examined some of the nuances of tab controls, both visible and invisible. Today we’re going to extend the exploration to include simulated and, in demo 5, genuine tab interfaces for layout navigation.

1386121787023

Today’s demo files:

Continue reading “Tab Panels: Seen, Unseen and Simulated” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 12 or later

Conditional Tab Panel Access

Kevin Frank

Challenge: in a system with three privilege sets, Employee, Manager and Administrator, you want to control access to various panels on this tab control like so:

  • Employees have access to tabs 1,2,3
  • Managers have access to tabs 1,2,3,4,5
  • Administrators and Developers have unrestricted access

1386121781660

As usual in the FileMaker world, there are various approaches you could take, and today we’re going to look at three of them with the help of these demos: Continue reading “Conditional Tab Panel Access” →

Level: Intermediate, Version: FM 10 or later, Virtual List

Conditional Subsummary Report in Browse Mode

Kevin Frank

Last time we looked at several summary reporting tricks, including a conditional subsummary (when an item’s Status is “Scheduled” it will have a value in the Substatus field — otherwise Substatus will be blank). The challenge was to generate a summary report showing Substatus only where appropriate, without seeing any annoying empty gray rows beneath Pending, Cancelled or Completed. And last week’s report worked fine… in preview mode.

9-11-2013 10-43-07 PM

Continue reading “Conditional Subsummary Report in Browse Mode” →